Mary Ann Caws

Surrealism is a survey of the twentieth century’s longest lasting and, arguably, most influential art movement. Championed and held together by André Breton for over forty years, Surrealism was France’s major avant-garde artistic tendency from 1924 onwards, rapidly spreading around the globe to become an international phenomenon. During World War II Surrealism’s exiled artists and writers had a major impact on American art and were a primary influence for the Abstract Expressionist generation. The official surrealist movement continued to the end of Breton’s life in 1966, and its legacy is still pervasive today, in contemporary art as well as in numerous quotations from surrealist imagery in cinema, advertising and the media. The Survey essay by Mary Ann Caws – a distinguished scholar, translator and associate of the Surrealists – describes in clear, perceptive and lively prose the essential characteristics that define Surrealism, as well as tracing a concise path through the chronology of this prolific and wide-ranging movement. The text also demonstrates how surrealist art and writing are interdependent. The Works section follows the movement from its beginnings in the 1920s up to the 1940s and 1950s. Its six sections trace the themes which predominated at different stages: Chance and Freedom – the earliest work, characterized by complete ‘automatic’ spontaneity; Poetics of Vision – the strategies of surrealist image-making, reflecting the mind’s inner visions; Elusive Objects – the fascination with objects of all kinds from which emerged artworks such as Meret Oppenheim’s celebrated fur-lined cup and saucer; Desire – the investigation of desire, eroticism and ‘mad love’ which is central and unique to the movement; Delirium – Surrealism’s high-risk engagement with extreme mental states and disturbing, uncanny visions; and the Infinite Terrains of later Surrealism, ranging from Joseph Cornell’s magical assemblages in box frames, like ‘theatres of the mind’, to the infinite fields and dynamic energy of late surrealist painting at the dawn of Abstract Expressionism. The Documents section includes important rediscovered writings alongside the key texts by leading figures. Many of the texts have been specially translated for this volume by Mary

Excelente libro que narra la biografía de la fotógrafa Dora Maar, amante y musa de Picasso durante siete años. Contiene, muchas otras, fotografías que ésta le hizo pintando, en la playa, sólo o con sus amigos, el documento unico del proceso de creacion del Guernica en el que ella es la mujer que lleva la lampara.

El arte es considerado habitualmente como una actividad solitaria. Pero los artistas visuales, escritores y músicos a menudo encuentran su energía a través de un entorno colectivo. Compartir ideas alrededor de una mesa siempre ha dado lugar a intercambios fructiferos entre artistas de todo tipo. En este libro, Mary Ann Caws explora una rica variedad de lugares de reunion, pasados y presentes, que han sido propicios para la liberacion y el sustento necesario de las energias creativas. "Encuentros creativos" habla de estos lugares en Europa y Estados Unidos, desde paisajes urbanos hasta refugios en islas, desde casas privadas hasta cafes publicos y colonias de artistas. Los ejemplos incluyen la casa de Florence Griswold en Old Lyme, Connecticut, lugar de reunion de la antigua colonia de arte de Lyme; el Cafe Louvre de Praga, lugar de reunion de Kafka y Einstein; el cafe modernista de Picasso en Barcelona, Els Quatre Gats; Charleston Farmehouse, lugar de reunion de Virginia Woolf y Vanessa y Duncan Bell, y los cafes de Saint-Germain-des-Pres y Montparnasse: los lugares de reunion de Apollinaire, Sartre y Patti Smith.

Cet ouvrage présente neuf artistes et écrivaines modernistes, connues ou moins connues, dans leur attitude de modernité : Judith Gautier, Dorothy Bussy, Suzanne Valadon, Emily Carr, Paula Modersohn-Becker, Dora Carrington, Isadora Duncan, Claude Cahun et Kay Boyle. Ces creatrices sont ici envisagees dans leur mode detre historique, ce qui revient de fait a les detacher dune pensee dualiste de lalterite pour les resituer dans leur rapport de collaboration avec la realite et lactualite de leur temps.Or lun des lieux ou leur travail de creation deploie sa dimension interactive et mobile est, quelque peu paradoxalement peut-etre, la relation a lecriture de soi, a divers degres de lintime. Pour toutes, en effet, ce mode decriture savere un medium decisif dans lacte delaboration de soi-meme et du present a partir des virtualites et des potentialites du present.Un large choix dextraits de lettres, journaux ou autres ecrits autobiographiques, pour la plupart inedits ou proposes dans de nouvelles traductions, permet dapprocher au plus pres ce processus qui participe dune recherche sans concession et requiert une faculte a se mouvoir de maniere labile entre regard de lautre et perception de soi.Plus proche de lexperimentation que de lexperience, lecriture sapprehende en premier lieu comme la recherche dune verite dont le texte ou le tableau (ou la photographie, ou la danse) ne sont que des incarnations toujours en devenir. Dans la perspective choisie par cet ouvrage, elle est aussi le moteur privilegie dune exploration a la fois transnationale et plurielle dun imaginaire du modernisme et de la modernite au feminin.